


mirrors for princes

by Odaigahara



Series: discord, i'm howling at the moon [3]
Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Dreams vs. Reality, Gen, Harm to Children, Kid Sides (Sanders Sides), Pre-Canon, Pre-Creativity Split (Sanders Sides), Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:14:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26353996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Odaigahara/pseuds/Odaigahara
Summary: Creativity's room was bigger than Ariel’s cave of human things, and the decorations changed every day. Sometimes it even shifted into a giant white space where anything was possible, but most of the time it stayed firmly indoors. Without another Side to play with, it was absolutely, positively boring. Creativity flopped onto his bed like a disgruntled starfish and sulked.After a few minutes of dramatic wallowing, the mirror across from his bed shimmered, and his reflection sat up and glowered. "What're you sitting around for?” it complained, hair mussed. Creativity reached up to his head to smooth it down, but the reflection didn’t bother. “This is boring. You’re supposed to copy me.”“You were laying down too,” Creativity sniffed. “And you’re the mirror.Youcopyme.”*Thomas turns nine, and Creativity's mirror starts talking to him.It'd be a lot less creepy if he hadn't started losing his memory at the same time.
Relationships: Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders & Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders
Series: discord, i'm howling at the moon [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1884838
Comments: 7
Kudos: 36
Collections: TSS Fanworks Collective





	mirrors for princes

**Author's Note:**

> Based on a prompt (sort of) from the Discord! If you are a fic writer who is interested in being on a Discord full of other fic writers, pls go to parallelmonsoon on tumblr. 
> 
> TW at end notes, and a big thanks to alicat54c and GoldenMeme for beta reading!

When Thomas played, the world changed around him.

Not really changed- Creativity _knew_ what was real, whatever Learning said- but it shifted in the ways that made colors brighter and sunlight thicker, that turned lines in the dirt to borders and tire swings to watchtowers. Thomas scribbled pictures of electrocuting his brother, ran shrieking from his friends in games of tag, got elbowed in the face playing Red Rover and splashed his friends at the pool party.

He put his head underwater at the pool and became a submarine, roving the depths for a lost artifact and somersaulting in the water to swim to the other end. He played the little brother in House and jumped a drainage ditch to outrun the Spinosaurus and whirled on his feet to fend off a cruel surprise attack, foam sword at the ready- and Creativity was there with him, lending strength to his blows and steel to his spine. _Look how the metal glints in the light, it’s so heroic! You slashed across his chest- look at the blood, the gaping wound! We’re victorious!_

Then the birthday party ended and Thomas's friends had to go home, but Creativity carried that excitement with him for the rest of the week. It was his responsibility to make sure Thomas had fun with all his presents. Responsibilities were a big deal.

Right then he was trying to figure out whether or not the remote-control car could work underwater, which unfortunately required outside input. “Learning! Learning, look at me pay attention this is _important!”_

“I’m busy,” Learning said, glaring up at him. He should’ve been in his room if he wanted to be all Magic School Bus, though, not on the living room floor with a notebook and a book about volcanoes, so Creativity sat down anyway. Learning had big square glasses and a dress shirt like Thomas had to wear for picture day, and his hair was way too neat. Creativity ruffled it; Learning squawked and smacked his hand. “Stop that!” He drew himself up. “Thomas is in class. Unless you want him to fail Social Studies and Mathematics and everything else, you will desist.”

“What’s desist?” Creativity asked, wrinkling his nose. The remote-control car faded from his mind, like most thoughts liked to do. “Sounds boring.”

“It means stop,” Learning said tartly. He looked back down at his notebook, scribbling about George Washington, and Creativity flopped on his belly next to him, propping his chin in his hands. Learning kept on working, but he didn’t ask him to leave.

The volcano book caught Creativity’s eye. He pulled it over, flipping through to find cool pictures, and gasped. There was a picture taking up a whole _two pages,_ of black rock and black skies and glowing orange lava dripping down a mountain like candle wax. It looked like an epic place for a fight scene. Creativity's mind whirled with ideas. “Learning! Where’s this?”

Learning didn't bother turning his head. “What page is it?”

“You could look,” Creativity whined.

“I’m helping Thomas do a worksheet. If you tell me the number I can say what I remember about it.”

“Ninety-seven,” Creativity said, curious now. "There's a picture."

“That’s Hawaii," Learning informed him. "Volcanoes National Park."

Hawaii! That meant hula and coconuts and people dancing in skirts and tidal waves and flower necklace things- “It looks like where Indiana Jones went!” Creativity blurted out, because that was the important part. “When, with the hand going into the guy’s heart and all the fire- _Learning what if Thomas saved someone from a volcano_.”

“That wouldn't make sense,” Learning said, frowning. “We don’t have volcanoes here."

“We could make a volcano,” Creativity said. “They always do it on TV, in science fairs and stuff, I bet we could make it hot and gigantic and then someone might fall in but Thomas would save them and get a kiss like a Disney prince, and fight a dragon, and jump off the side when it erupted and run down to the jungle and almost get eaten by ants but he wouldn’t because he’d be too fast for their little ant legs! I bet he could fight an ant. Or make friends with them like Honey I Shrunk The Kids.”

The possibilities came to life around him, half-realized visions of violence and heroics dancing in his vision. Learning couldn't see them, not yet, but Creativity could taste them in the air. The flash of a sword, hot shimmery air over the lava, a guy falling in and burning up in smoke, a jungle shrieking with colorful birds-

“I suppose,” Learning said, breaking his reverie, “but it can’t be real. If Thomas falls down a mountain, he'll die.”

“Duh,” Fear muttered from where he was lying on the couch, wrapped in blankets. Creativity jumped- he hadn't noticed him there, Fear was too creepy crawly to make sound when he moved- and stuck out his tongue at him. Fear made a face back.

That was it. Sticking around there was way too boring. “I’m gonna play volcanoes,” Creativity said, jumping to his feet. “Fear can come with me if he’s not being dumb. You can too, Learning.”

“What about Liar?” Fear asked, coming out of his blanket huddle. His skin was pale like Snow White’s or a dead guy’s, and he kept biting his lip. That was weird, but Creativity did it too sometimes, so he guessed it was alright. “I’ll play if Liar plays.”

Creativity considered. Liar was fun but sometimes he took over, which was dumb because kings were supposed to be in charge and Creativity had made himself a fancy crown to prove his kingship and everything. “Only if Heart does,” he conceded. The deal was struck.

They found Heart and Liar lining up stuffed animals upstairs in the hallway. Liar was lecturing them, hand on his heart, while Heart watched avidly with a panda in his lap. “And furthermore, since this panda is guilty of murder-"

“He wouldn’t murder!” Heart objected. “Murder is _bad_.”

“He’s on trial,” Liar said. “That means he murdered or stole something or crashed his car. I’m telling the judge he did murder so they don’t think he did drugs.”

Heart’s eyes went shimmery. “Panda doesn’t _do_ drugs.”

“That means he killed someone, which isn’t as bad," Liar explained. The judge, a plush lobster, regarded him with beady crustacean eyes. “If you kill someone you can say they were attacking you so you had to kill them. You can say they robbed you! But you can’t say you had drugs ‘cause the other person did them at you.”

“But what if they make you do drugs?" Fear asked. He'd brought the blanket with him and was clutching it to his chest like a shield.

Liar blinked, evidently noticing him for the first time. Heart beamed and said, "Hi, Fear, Creativity! Don’t worry, it’s not real. Panda’s a good Christian bear.”

“Why would they make you do drugs?” Liar asked. “That means they get less drugs.”

“It’s what the commercials say,” Fear said, hugging his blanket tight. “You go into an alley and a guy says do you want drugs and if you say yes you’re a criminal and the police put you in jail and Thomas never sees his parents and then he _dies!”_

The air went cold like someone had opened a freezer, and the shadows around them pooled like dark ink on the carpet. Heart whimpered, shoulders rising up to his ears, and Creativity snapped, “He’ll just say no! Then the guy can attack and Thomas can shoot him like Liar says.”

Heart's eyes got even wider at that, filling with tears, and Liar said hurriedly, “That’ll never happen." Heart looked at him hopefully, and he added, "And look, Fear and Creativity came to play with us! They can be the jury."

"I thought the Beanie Babies were the jury," Heart said, and Liar shrugged. "Oh, okay! Fear, do you think Panda's guilty?"

"Fear's playing with me," Creativity said, but the other Side was already sitting down. He seethed. "I don't want to play trial! It's boring."

"Go play with Learning," Fear said, glaring. "Or be a cop. I'm not making Heart sad."

"I don't like being sad," Heart said apologetically.

Creativity stomped his foot. "Fine! But next time you want to play with me, _I'm_ saying no," he declared, and sank out in a huff.

Creativity's room was bigger than Ariel’s cave of human things, and the decorations changed every day. Sometimes it even shifted into a giant white space where anything was possible, but most of the time it stayed bound-in, firmly indoors. Still, without another Side to play with him, it was absolutely, positively _boring_. Creativity flopped onto his bed like a disgruntled starfish and sulked.

After a few minutes of dramatic wallowing, the mirror across from his bed shimmered, and his reflection sat up and glowered. "What're you sitting around for?” it complained, hair mussed. Creativity reached up to his head to smooth it down, but the reflection didn’t bother. “This is boring. You’re supposed to copy me.”

“You were laying down too,” Creativity sniffed. “And _you’re_ the mirror. You copy me.”

“I’m original, pisshead,” the reflection said, face twisting. “We should do something fun. I wanna find porn.”

"I don't even know what that is," Creativity accused, and the reflection tilted its head. "Why are you so _weird?"_

"Because I am," the reflection said. Creativity rolled his eyes, even though that kind of made sense.

His reflection had started talking to him just the week before, which _was_ weird and didn't seem to have happened for any reason. Creativity had been practicing swords for the first time, bored of playing with the shield and the plastic lightsaber, and his reflection had groaned and switched to a mace. Maces were better, it had claimed, because swords were just big knives.

That was wrong and dumb, obviously, but the talking mirror wasn't super unexpected. The Evil Queen had a magic mirror, too.

"The others wouldn't play with me," Creativity said, glaring at the ceiling.

"Make them play with you! That's what I'm gonna do."

"You aren't gonna do anything," Creativity said. "You're a mirror."

"I've been imagining stuff," the reflection said, flopping on the bed again. He tilted his head so his face was upside-down. “I'm ready to play _now,_ though. What if I cut off a finger? D’you think it’d grow back?”

“We wouldn’t match," Creativity said, because someone had to point it out.

“Your finger would go too,” the reflection scoffed. “Obviously. Keep up, loser.”

“I’m _not_ \- you’re the loser! All you do is talk.”

“I like talking. And your finger would be gone too, 'cause you're me."

“Whatever.” Creativity turned over and took out a coloring book, tuning the reflection out. Eventually it got bored and left, probably, but Creativity didn't notice; he was busy coloring Cinderella's hair bright canary yellow, shading darker at the edges. Something about how the colors blended into each other made him feel like dancing.

*

Creativity woke the next morning to distant giggling and a knock on his door. He groaned, waving a hand to turn the lights on, and called, “Who is it?”

“It's Heart! Can you get up?”

Ugh. “I’m coming!” Creativity snapped himself into clean clothes, room whirling into a new pattern around him, and opened the door to Heart’s excited grin. “What’re you waking me up for? Thomas isn’t even up.”

“I wanted to tell you I like what you did with the living room!” Heart informed him, tugging his hand. Creativity let himself be led down the hall, confusion halting all other emotions. “They’re like little spaceships, there’s not a _space_ you didn’t fill-”

They came out into the living room, and Creativity boggled. The walls and floor and ceiling were covered in marker drawings in all the colors of the Crayola rainbow; some were stick men being electrocuted or stabbed or beheaded, but most were thin ovals with two circles at the base. A few had little raindrops at the tips.

Creativity knew the shapes intimately, having seen them scrawled in bathroom stalls since the second grade. His face heated with mortification. How _unoriginal,_ and _gross,_ and- “I didn’t draw that!” he squeaked, and Heart looked at him, baffled.

“But Learning didn’t. And Fear said he didn’t, and Liar said he did but that means he didn’t-”

“Liar’s probably- double lying,” Creativity said, staring. The drawings were on both sides of the couch cushions. Learning was inspecting one with a frown, trying to scrub it clean with a sponge.

When he got back to his room, the reflection was still face down on the bed, even though Creativity had been up for hours.

Creativity tracked down Learning the next day, but since Thomas was in school he couldn’t do much more than sit around and convince Thomas to doodle on the math worksheets. Learning was focused on Science today, and since Thomas had gotten a new book out from the library he’d decided to absorb everything in it. Creativity couldn’t make sense of the title.

“Schrodinger,” Learning corrected after the first mispronunciation. “He was a scientist.”

Creativity made a face. Science. It limited everything. “What’d he do?” he asked reluctantly, recognizing the look on Learning’s face. It was the _I-know-something-you-don’t_ look. In a second it would morph to the _let-me-tell-you-all-about-it_ look, and then he’d be doomed anyway.

“Quantum physics,” Learning said, perking up. “But he’s most well known for Schrodinger’s Cat. It’s an illustration of quantum superposition where there’s a cat in a box with a box of poison and a monitor that detects radiation. If the monitor goes off, the poison kills the cat. If it doesn’t, the cat stays alive. But since the box is closed and the chances of the monitor going off are unpredictable, the cat is considered both dead and alive. It’s an analogy for how, on the subatomic level, two contradictory states can be true simultaneously, unless they’re observed.” 

Creativity puzzled through that one. “So any cat in a box is dead and alive at the same time,” he guessed. That didn’t sound right.

“No,” Learning said. “It’s science. It’s about electrons.”

“I don’t know what that is,” Creativity said. “Can I ask you something though, since you’re smart?” 

Learning preened. “Of course. That’s what I’m for.” He pushed his glasses up his nose and regarded him eagerly. “What is the nature of your inquiry?”

 _Does your mirror ever talk to you?_ He couldn’t make himself ask it. There was a vicious chill traveling up his spine, anticipation of a problem, like going to the dentist and waiting to see if Thomas had a cavity. If Learning said yes, everything would be fine. But if Learning said _no-_

His stomach felt tight. “Never mind,” Creativity said. “What’re you doing after school?”

“Making a schedule!” Learning said, pulling out a piece of paper. “The counselor said a good schedule is the key to good grades and a healthy life, so I’m making healthy decisions. Thomas can’t eat cosmic brownies anymore.”

Creativity listened until the boredom got physically painful, since if he didn’t Learning would get snippy, then retreated to his room at the first opportunity. 

The reflection was standing when he entered. “Where’ve you been?” it asked, swiping a fist under its nose. Its eyes were dark and bruisy, hair unbrushed; there was blood beading at its lip.

Creativity raised a hand to his mouth and brought it back red. “I’m bleeding,” he said, staring at the spot of crimson. Like a little blooming rose, or a knight’s banner. “Why am I bleeding?”

“I wanted to see what I tasted like,” the reflection said, and Creativity’s head went light. He groped out for the bedframe and swayed, barely catching himself enough to sit. Blood. He’d never really bled before, not when he wasn’t playing. It felt different, when he was just in his room alone. “So where were you?”

“With Learning,” Creativity said, then snapped, “Where were you? Did you draw all that stuff on the walls?”

“They’re called di-”

“We’re not allowed to say that!” Creativity shrilled, and the reflection’s mouth widened into a grin, making the edges of his lips hurt. “I don’t want to talk to you. No one else has a creepy mirror.”

“That’s ‘cause they’re dumb.” The reflection cocked its head, eyes bright and glimmering. “Even Learning. He’s too boring, I don’t get it.”

“He’s a nerd,” Creativity informed him sulkily. “Nerds are boring.”

The reflection crossed its legs and sat down. “I don’t remember Learning being this boring,” it whined. “He used to be cool.”

“He is cool!” Creativity said, bristling. “Just a nerd. Like heroic scientists, or Merlin.”

“Bo-ring. He should turn into a tree. That would make him interesting again. And then a lumberjack could come by and hit it with an axe and the bark would bleed, blood everywhere, and he’d slip in it and die and Learning’s roots would drink the blood and eat the flesh and-”

“That’s disgusting!”

“I’m disgusting!” The reflection grinned. “You’re a stupid mirror.”

“I’m Creativity,” the Side snapped, “and you’re a jerk. I don’t want to talk to you anymore. You can just shut up and sit there and not make any noise at all."

The copy’s face turned ugly. “Fine,” it snarled, moving out of sight, and the mirror went dark. Creativity startled- he hadn’t known it could do that- but as the silence dragged on, he cheered up. Maybe this meant he’d finally gotten rid of the magic part! It had become such a nuisance, after all; now that it was gone, things could go back to normal.

He tried to stand, but the dizziness stayed, turning his legs to jelly. The door felt like it was a hundred miles away, the rest of Thomas’s mind an impossibly distant other world. He blinked, room wavering, and for a few seconds felt as insubstantial as mist.

**Author's Note:**

> TW: vague uninformed sexual references


End file.
